June 29, 2006

Most of you probably didn't realize that I've been operating Syntax of Things for two years now as a rather uncleaver ruse, simply dangling the bait out there in the literary pond hoping to land the really big fish, wanting nothing more than to wake up one morning, open up the gmail account, and read something like this:

June 28, 2006

I'm not enough of an optimist to think that taking a series from Satan's Minions in their domain would have turned around a season for the Braves. But a series win in Yankee Stadium is nice no matter what the Braves' record. Now instead of what could have been the best win of the season--a one-run win on a Giles homer in the 12th to take the series two games to one--turns into the lowest point of a rather low season for me. Now I'm feeling like the guy pictured above. Almost makes me want to watch a World Cup game. Almost.

So just what have I been learning from our weekly birth education classes? Besides the important stuff, the things Elaine and I will need in about six weeks to get through labor and delivery, I've come to realize that despite my thirty-five-plus years on Earth I still have that immature teenager inside of me who can't help but laugh at certain words, cringe at the image evoked by others. I've also learned that men are pretty much useless as far as keeping this planet populated is concerned. That is, once we set the whole process in motion. We definitely got the better end of the Adam and Eve curse, in my opinion. Mad props to the moms out there. Anyway, I'll have to be brief this morning. I have mental images that need some cleansing:

L. Stuart, the man responsible for publishing some of this country's most controversial books, including The Anarchist Cookbook, The Turner Diaries, and Naked Came the Stranger, died on Saturday at his home in New Jersey. He was 83.

I used to flatter myself that because I could ace tests, I could somehow ace life—that I could go wherever I wanted in life with the same cynical sense of immunity. But four months of sawing through chalkboards and painting desks pink and chewing out the innards of 16-mm film projectors made me realize that was a lie. The truth is that in the final two years of school, I came within a breath of quitting maybe four or five times. I was so bored I felt I'd been clubbed by the world's biggest dodge ball. I was desperate to jailbreak and hated every moment of grades eleven and twelve. Every moment.

Speaking of personal papers, the Van Gogh Museum, which I highly recommend if you're in Amsterdam and can find your way through the haze, has purchased fifty-five letters written by the artist.

"We learn a lot about how he thinks about composition. We learn a lot about how he thinks about working with models — how important it is to grasp your subject from people," said Van Gogh Museum curator Hans Luijten.

In the letters, they debate social issues, literature, art and even art supplies. The letters also include sketches by van Gogh and express his desire "to make art about the common people and for the common people," Luijten said.

June 27, 2006

I'm not sure if many will agree, but this could be a sign that New Orleans is well on its way to a full recovery:

Davis said it wasn’t supposed to be like this. They survived Hurricane Katrina’s Category 3 winds and the ensuing looters. They reopened despite the long odds of doing business in a devastated city. The last thing the Magazine Street shop owners expected to threaten their survival was a crime ring of transvestites.

“They’re fearless,” said Ogle. “Once they see something they like they won’t stop until they have it. They don’t care, they’ll go to jail. It’s really gotten bad. You know it’s ridiculous when everyone on the block knows who they are.”

There's nothing good about drug use. We know it. It destroys individuals. It destroys families. Drug use destroys societies. Drug use, some might say, is destroying this country. And we have laws against selling drugs, pushing drugs, using drugs, importing drugs. And the laws are good because we know what happens to people in societies and neighborhoods, which become consumed by them. And so if people are violating the law by doing drugs, they ought to be accused and they ought to be convicted and they ought to be sent up.

What this says to me is that too many whites are getting away with drug use. Too many whites are getting away with drug sales. Too many whites are getting away with trafficking in this stuff. The answer to this disparity is not to start letting people out of jail because we're not putting others in jail who are breaking the law. The answer is to go out and find the ones who are getting away with it, convict them and send them up the river, too.

...We are becoming too tolerant as a society, folks, especially of crime, in too many parts of the country.... This country certainly appears to be tolerant, forgive and forget. I mean, you know as well as I do, you go out and commit the worst murder in the world and you just say you're sorry, people go, "Oh, OK. A little contrition."... People say, "I feel better. He said he's sorry for it." We're becoming too tolerant, folks.

Over the next few days, you'll probably notice a few links to items that you've already read, this being a direct result of my week-long absence and the fact that I feel the need to point out some things that have caught my attention during the time off. I'll try to mix in some fresh news and content when I can, so bear with me as I sort through this backlog.

is a geographic text browser, intended to help readers explore the spatial component of classic works of literature. Gutenkarte downloads public domain texts from Project Gutenberg, and then feeds them to MetaCarta's GeoParser API, which extracts and returns all the geographic locations it can find.

I'm pretty sure that I've said it before, but if not I'll say it now, David Lowery, of Camper Van Beethoven and Cracker fame, deserves more credit as a songwriter. In my opinion, he's one of our better ones. Check out this quote from a recent interview:

Most rock music is written in the style you learned in the seventh grade - 'What I did over my summer vacation.' I'm trying to write records the way Thomas Pynchon writes novels or (Federico) Fellini made movies: Tell a serious story using these absurdist tools like the unreliable narrator, where you know the storyteller is not telling the truth. I'm trying to use absurdity, irony and sarcasm in that tangential way Joseph Heller used in 'Catch 22.'

And if you think he's kidding, here's a snippet from one of CVB's very early songs, "Peace and Love":

Restless, three days without sleep, his mind wrapped in barely perceptible haze, he continues east, shaking, despite the stuttering convulsions and near death throes of his endearing 1962 Chevrolet. Storm follows him closely as it has for 3 days. In the pouring rain on the long dark highways he sees roadside casualty armadillos on their backs and owls and bats fly out of the his eyes into the blinding horizon. Despite the solitude of his dear car he feels he is being watched by more than just the curious deer and west Texas highway transients. At dawn, he begins to feel the first nearly imperceptible signs of the drugs taking effect. He crosses the border east into New Mexico. There is now no question in his mind about the flavor of the coffee and the sardonic smile of the crusty over made waitress. As he's crossing more than 2 states at once, his watch stops. He picks up a hitchhiker, some young lady, but unfortunately, as he's been expecting, the car breaks down in an abandoned shanty town known only as Brubaker.

"Just remember," she says. "I'm holding you responsible for all this" He cringes at the tone of her voice. A quick glance in the rear view mirror reveals to him the vision of the 3rd unattached eyeball. A star of dried cream at the bottom of the Styrofoam cup on the dashboard smiles at him and somehow, in her loneliness and boredom, her twelve-pack dwindling in the midday heat, he forces her into sex. The Chevrolet temporarily fixed, they drift on and fall upon a small bar in no place specific. Drunk by evening, she complains of morning sickness and by morning has noticeably grown in size. 2 days later, still heading east towards the holy angelic temple he has been envisioning in his sleep, she is 9 months pregnant. Later that day she gives birth to their son.

Born with gingham snakeskin cowboy boots and three umbilical cords he is within hours cursing his parents in some otherworldly alien language. And he mutters in perfect English in his sleep, while sucking his mothers breast, his twisted Utopian visions. She looks at him terrified and says, "Remember, I'm holding you responsible for all of this.

June 26, 2006

A few weeks ago I mentioned my disdain for Henry Rollins. I received a few emails asking why. Well, I'll save the reasons for another day, but you can be sure that this old interview at the Modern Word is just one of many examples of the crap that comes out of his piehole that has pissed me off:

Neddal Ayad: I’m talking to you for a Web site called The Modern
Word. They cover writers like Kathy Acker, J.G. Ballard, Ezra Pound,
Faulkner...

Henry Rollins: Yeah, just so you know, that kind of writing never really did much for me. I knew Kathy more that I read Kathy.

They’re also big fans of Nick Cave over there.

Yeah, and we’ve published Nick here.

And William S. Burroughs, and Hubert Selby Jr.

Cubby
[Hubert Selby Jr.’s middle name/nickname] is a long time friend of
mine. But a guy like Burroughs, I tried to get through a few Burroughs
books and was never able actually to complete Cities of Red Night, Exterminator, all that stuff, I could never punch through them.

Was it the style, or...

It never held me. That whole Re/Search magazine gang, you know, my life experience was so street level, on the ground touring. I remember reading On the Road by
Kerouac in ’82 and the only thing that occurred to me was, “Kerouac,
what a pussy,” because it was so nothing like what I was enduring on
the road. I was watching people get stabbed and I was seeing some
pretty rough stuff.

That’s interesting; I was going to ask you about the Beats, because...

Kerouac, I can’t stand, I don’t see what the fascination is. I’ve tried Visions of Gerard, Desolation Angels... I got through part of the Cody book. Desolation Angels I tried to read as a favour to a friend of mine. I couldn’t get through it. On the Road I got through because it was the only book at SST to read. But the rest of it... I just can’t identify with it.

You’re tossed in with the Beat writers.

That’s too bad. Allan Ginsberg’s poetry I’ve enjoyed. I was raised with Kaddish and Howl. I think Howl
is one of the strongest pieces of American literature, I mean, at that
point. That’s one of those things you really wish you had written, you
know, it’s a beautiful piece of work.

Seriously, who threw that jackass in with the Beat writers? Have they actually read his stuff or the Beats? My head is spinning.

I was this close to firing up the blog machine and giving it a go for today, but the lure of the old familiar couch in the new den, a rainy day, and a couple of good books made me reconsider. Check back later. I'm starting to get that itch.

June 20, 2006

Despite the fact that my body feels like I've just played in a Stanley Cup Final Game 7, what with all the heavy lifting and assembling and all-around hell that is moving, all is going according to schedule and if Time Warner keeps its end of the bargain, I'll be back and blogging by early next week. In the meantime, here's what's keeping a smile on my face today.

June 16, 2006

What did people do before Al Gore invented the internets? I guess I'll find out this coming week. As of tomorrow morning when I unplug the laptop and move it over to the new headquarters I'll be without any connection to the internet for a week. Assuming that one of my new neighbors isn't leaking wireless goodness for me to borrow, I'm going to go all Tingle Alley* on you all and take a week off. So consider this the last post until the folks at Time Warner of Raleigh rescue me from internetless oblivion. Let me just say how much I'll miss you.

Just say you'll miss me too.**

Oh, before I forget, a huge thank you to our landlord for these last two months and all-around great person, who is great despite her traitorous ways; Lucina, you're the best. You can have your house back now.

*Kidding CAAF. I know you're busy. I just wonder if your dog ever gets tired of sitting on that couch. You promised you'd be back April 18th and the poor thing has been sitting there, waiting, making sure your books behave, for all these weeks now.

**I'm well aware that this is a different Wilco song than the one hinted at in the title. Somehow, though, the two get tangled up in my head.

June 15, 2006

Interesting that during his lifetime Charles Bukowski met with nothing but scorn and ridicule from the majority of those who serve as the self-appointed guardians of the reading lists. Now look at him, spinning in his grave, laughing with drunken pride, as his archive, full of his drinking fables and gambling anecdotes, gets a cozy reception and a nice home at the venerable Huntington Library in Pasadena:

The literary archive includes corrected typescripts of poems, fan mail, first and foreign editions of his works, fine press collectors editions, magazine publications of his works, photography books and his own artwork, according to Lisa Blackburn, a Huntington Library spokeswoman.

There's even going to be a party in his honor. "Celebrating Bukowski" will be held September 20th at Huntington and will include reading from his work and a panel discussion. No word if booze will be served.

Expect low output from this blogger for the next few days as I prepare for the relocation to our new house. Most of the move will be taking place on Saturday, but I've already unearthed one possible complication: I put down the wrong date for the hookup of our cable and internet services. This could mean a whole week separated from the WWW. Whatever shall I do? That's why I've been inspired to list a few of the sites and content that have caught my attention over the last few days and some blogs that are worthy of your attention. I hope to be back soon:

One blog that I've really been enjoying of late is the great PrettyFakes. Professor Fury and Gorjus provide a nice mix of the visual and the written, the literary and the personal, the high arts and the loner NIN fan.

I'm happy to see the nonist is posting again. Always a good source of esoteric information.

Ditto for Out of the Woods Now. A.M. Correa comes out of the woods to post about Faulkner and the language of As I Lay Dying.

Now if only we could get something new from Asheville. And wouldn't it be nice if Jimmy Beck fought off the hackers and reclaimed the Large Vibrating Egg?

Sometimes a great blogger gets it dead wrong: "Opener and fellow Team Love-r David Dondero's country-folk sounds midwestern to a fault, which is strange since he actually hails from San Francisco via Austin. He also sounds like what I suspect is an ever-growing generation of songwriters who really do hold Conor Oberst in higher regard than, oh, anyone, often apeing his pinched, emo-wounded vocal delivery and verbose lyrical style. I arrived a little late so I didn't see the full set, but I saw enough to figure what he was about and wasn't especially impressed or offended." No, no, no. It's the other way around: Oberst aped Dondero.

The folks at my favorite Braves blog, Rowland's Office, are using the Braves' depressing plummet to the deep end of the standings to move their headquarters from the painfully unreliable Blogger to the just plain unreliable Typepad.

Finally, if I ever decide to reinvent this blog with all new content, I might go the route of The Baseball Card Blog. Not only does Ben do a great job analyzing card sets, making me regret the day I decided to quit collecting, but he also dedicates a lot of his writing to individual cards. It's not always about a card's monetary value, sometimes it's more about its worth as a memento from his childhood. Or perhaps the card triggers a commentary on a movie he's just seen. Here's a great example and one of my favorite posts from this still young blog:

Sometimes, just by looking at the picture, you can tell that either the photographer forgot a player until the last minute or, as is the case here, it was written into the standard baseball card company photographer’s handbook that one should never ever approach Gaylord Perry when he’s relaxing in the bullpen with a baseball bat across his lap. You never know what might happen, especially if someone calls him Herman Munster to his face. It’s sad, really. Here’s one of the best long-term, long-haul pitchers of his generation who was consistently robbed of great baseball cards because photographers had a way of making his head look elongated like Fred Gwynne. It’s the same reason why Kevin McHale never really had any close-ups taken: they’re just not good-looking individuals. Especially in this case: after a career full of bad card photos, it was probably best to get a shot of him waiting to knock the crap out of an unsuspecting passer-by.

June 14, 2006

Somewhere under all that red and orange and pink and yellow indicating up to 9 inches of rain, most of it falling in about an eight-hour period, Lord Stanley's Cup awaits its own tropical storm.

Apologies for the lameness of that sentence. Seriously, though, that was a bonafide gullywasher we had today. I think I saw more rain in this one day than I did in most years that I lived in San Diego.

I'm still recovering from the trip. That's why I'm letting a few images do the work for me today. Keep in mind that this is a perfect example of why I hold my breath every time my wife goes to a yard sale.

Before you take a look at the photos below, let me add that the Elvis bunghole isn't just a sacrosanct Southern icon. We all know that Elvis's bunghole is everywhere. You just have to know which yard sales to visit.

And as a sort of soundtrack to these photos, please grab a free download of "In the Ghetto," part of the Elvis for Babies album which can be found at eMusic.

June 13, 2006

In case you're wondering, I don't use Amazon links on this blog. Haven't since I found out that Amazon supported an overwhelming number of Red-state causes. Plus, I would prefer that any sales generated by my blog go to a great bookstore like Powell's or even directly to the author if she or he offers the book online. Sure, I have a few old Amazon links to books I mentioned in the early days of Syntax of Things and through those I've managed to earn myself a hefty forty-seven cents thanks to someone ordering a book about gardening. I haven't checked my stats in a while, so I might be up to a whole buck fifty by now. I do have some ads on this site, but they have nothing to do with books, which I still find a little odd that a company would pay me to advertise their products despite the fact that I never mention said products in my posts.

And because he outed me, I have to reveal that inside sources have informed me that Ed Champion's Return of the Reluctant is a registered non-profit in support of the Karl Rove in 2008 campaign. Every time you click a link on his site, another Democrat dies.

I think Satan, aka George Steinbrenner, must have his spies reading through the blogs and one of them spotted the post I made about my future visit to Yankee Stadium to see his minions. Well, he summoned up a nice little tropical system and had it move up the coast thus spoiling my plans and causing me to rearrange my flights so I could get back before the former Alberto parked itself over North Carolina. The last thing I wanted was to spend a day in the Newark airport waiting out probable delays. I'm back in Raleigh and tired. But glad to be home.

The Boston Globe uses the occasion of Harvard University Press' publication of an English translation of "On Hashish" to examine Walter Benjamin's drug use:

And yet, surprisingly, few writers have approached the experience of intoxication with Benjamin's earnestness, profound wonderment, and sense of purpose. Neither a recreational user nor an addict, he had a studious, deliberate, almost scholarly approach. In 1927, persuaded by some doctor friends to take part in their research, Benjamin began to dabble in a range of drugs-opium, hashish, mescaline-and recorded his experiences in a series of fragments and ``protocols": observations in Benjamin's hand alternating with the musings of his medical pals.

Everyone from merchandisers to hoteliers hawk $15,000 signed first editions of his books, offer $1,000-a-plate dinners in his home and hold a Hemingway festival during the traditionally slow fall season, transforming one of the nation's most recognizable writers into Papa the Pitchman.

June 12, 2006

Hard to believe I've made it this far. 1,500 big ones. 1,500 times I've asked you, the reader, my friends, to indulge my indulgences. Mark my word, I haven't any idea if I'll even make it to the 2,000-post milestone, but I promise that every post from now on will be one less that you'll have to read on this site, or any site for that matter. So what gets the honor of being the 1,500th Syntax of Things post?

How about Henry Rollin's video letter to Ann Coulter. The advice he gives her--"just shut the f--- up!"--is pretty much the same thing I've wanted to say to Henry for the last decade. Still, this is damn funny.

I'm back in Jersey City again, staying at a hotel just across the river from New York City. I snapped this photo from my hotel room.

I don't know how much I'll be able to keep things updated this week, but I'll check in when possible.

Tuesday night, I'll be meeting up with Levi Asher and his son to take in a Yankees game. I'm sure Levi would like for me to point out that I had to beg him to go to a Yankees game, he being a Mets fan and everything. But his beloved, first-place Mets are out of town, so we'll be cheering on the Indians, putting aside our bitter National League East rivalry in hopes of seeing Satan's Minions lose a game in our presence. And while I know there will be plenty of baseball discussion, I'll be sure to ask Levi about one thing. From an interview with Bill Ectric:

Bill: Did you get the Moby Dick tattoo before or after you tried to impress Ginsberg with your knowledge of Melville?

Levi: I got my Moby Dick tattoo on my 40th birthday, 11/18/2001. I took my three kids to the tattoo parlor with me, and it was quite a fun day. So, this was several years after I met Ginsberg. I think he would have been impressed by the tattoo, but I also don't think his affection for Melville is as great as mine. He's more of a Whitman/Blake guy. I'm more of a Melville/Dostoevsky guy. I think the photograph of a tattoo of a tiger on the cover of my poetry chapbook Tiger's Milk would have impressed him more, especially if I told him it was a "tyger" a la Blake.

The News Observer (Raleigh) asks thirty-two North Carolina writers to weigh in on the NY Times' recent "best book" debacle and to offer up their own best fiction of the last twenty-five years. The winner, which I'm sure will make Levi cringe, was Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian. I am happy to see that someone finally nominated one of my favorites: Raymond Carver's Cathedral. Where's the love for the short story been in all of these surveys?

###

San Diego Union Tribune books editor Arthur Salm details the love affair many publishers seem to have with right-wing pundits.

###

So I've yet to watch a single World Cup match and don't know when I'll have time to watch my first. Am I stressing, losing a lot of sleep because I'm not among the couple of billion who are tuning in on their televisions? No. Despite playing soccer as a little boy, I don't have much need to watch the sport on TV. In my unofficial survey of myself, the World Cup goes down as the most overrated sporting event, barely beating out the Daytona 500 and the WNBA Championship, though it's arguable as to whether the latter actually qualifies. Go ahead and send me reasons why I need to be watching this exciting tournament. I've heard it all before. So has the Indianapolis Star's Bob Kravitz:

This quadrennium, I swear, I'm going to try to care about the FIFA World Cup, at least for as long as I can stand it, because I am told those who are not consumed by the world's biggest, most popular event are essentially mouth-breathing, Ann Coulter-reading morons who vote for Taylor Hicks and think Dan Brown is the literary descendant of William Styron and Elie Wiesel.

June 10, 2006

If you're like me--someone who could pass out at the sight of an infected paper cut--there are seven words you don't want to hear just before your birth educator hits play on her video presentation: "from the delivery doctor's point of view." I guess you could say that I'm glad I didn't eat breakfast before this morning's class. And it's a good thing that I didn't know what was coming beforehand. Otherwise, I would have had a flu this morning. I would have come up with some handy excuse, anything to keep me from reliving that moment in high school when my AP Biology teacher forced us to watch Nova's Miracle of Life. Many years of not being able to look at, much less eat, red Jello followed.

So there I sat in the uncomfortable metal chair getting more uncomfortable, surrounded by ten other expectant dads each with an uncertain look on his face, waiting for the moment, the point of view moment. It reminded me of watching a horror flick when you know that something is about to happen but you're not sure when. We heard about the stages of labor, listened to interviews with couples including one woman who went on a hike during labor, and then like Jason lunging from a dark closet a head appeared, at least I think it was head. Even the belabored mother in the video said "It doesn't look like a baby." I didn't have time to look down at the painted toenails of the pregnant woman sitting next to me. A head, a neck, a shoulder, BAM!. And I thought, "Damn, that wasn't so bad." But guess what? I forgot about the delivery of the placenta. I'd let down my guard and before I knew it the bloody mass came roaring out and I didn't flinch, afraid to move, fearing that I might lose the breakfast that I hadn't eaten that morning. Maintaining my composure even as the doctor inspected the placenta to make sure it had all come out intact. Actually, it wasn't bad. And now I think I'm prepared. If nothing else, I have a new appreciation for dénouement.

So after calming my stomach with a burrito, I got home and was greeted with another email referral to two amazing YouTube videos. Just the thing I needed: a very young Tom Waits being Tom Waits (part one; part two). It helped erase the lingering effects of what I'd seen just a few hours earlier. If nothing else, these videos are perfect for a Saturday night. Still, I wonder if I'll be able to eat Jello anytime soon.

June 09, 2006

Don't let the title fool you. This won't be a preview of this year's World Cup. Hell, I'd have a hard time guessing more than a dozen teams that are in it much less predict just how good any of them are. I'll probably watch but for the same reason that I watch a major golf tournament: it will help put me to sleep on a Sunday afternoon. Don't get me wrong, soccer is a fine sport and I'm sure that I'm missing out on many of the nuances that make it the most popular in the world, but I don't have a history with it, I don't know the teams, the players, the coaches, so it's just not on my radar of things to do and watch this summer. Yet.

All that said, I'm still in recovery mode from a week spent learning labor and laboring over learning. Thus, I'm bringing back an update post that I tried about a year ago, one in which I use some of this blog's categories to bring folks up-to-date on what's going on in my world, a cup full of my world. Get it? I'm sure you couldn't be more excited:

Baby: We have a little over eight weeks to go. Am I nervous? More so about my participation in the delivery than anything else. I'm what you might call a hyperwimp when it comes to anything medical. I get queasy just smelling the inside of a hospital. Now I have to try to maintain my composure and be the calming influence for Elaine during her labor? I'm prepping for this by doing nothing. I figure I'll just let nature take over, allow my paternal instincts to kick in, hope that the floor is soft for my landing. Other than that, we're basically in a hurry-up-and-wait mode, slowly putting together what will be the baby's room even though we aren't even in the new house. I'm not worried at the moment, but check back with me in a few weeks.

Baseball: I thought about skipping this category simply because I don't want to comment on how horrible the Braves have been playing, especially the last two weeks but really the entire season. A very inconsistent team to say the least. I'm still holding out hope but it begins to fade with each swing and miss, and they seem to be doing a lot of that this year.

In non-Braves baseball news, I made my first trip to Zebulon, North Carolina, to see the Carolina Mudcats take on the Mississippi Braves. I did get to see this version of the Braves win, a small bonus considering the big league club was getting swept in a double header by the Diamondbacks. The highlight for me was seeing the mascot, a rather frightening looking catfish, take a lap around the field in his ATV. It was one of those truly great minor-league experiences seeing a catfish jump the bullpen mound, his odd looking tail trailing behind him as he soared through the air, flopping and flailing and waving to the crowd.

Hell in a handbasket: From Amsterdam: "An addiction center is opening Europe's first detox clinic for game addicts, offering in-house treatment for people who can't leave their joysticks alone."

Music: I'm in one of those ebbs in my music listening. Right now, nothing sounds good to me. Could be that my ears are adjusting to the South, but I can't get my groove on at the moment. Recommendations welcome. Of course, the new M. Ward could change all of that.

Raleigh: The newest category, one inspired by the move here in April. So far, I've nothing but good things to say about this area. Sure, it's not the postcard everywhere you turn that San Diego is, but when you consider that the city has everything one could want and it's much easier and cheaper to get and the potential here is unlimited, then you can see why I'll settle for an actual postcard from San Diego rather than spending my kid's college fund to live in the real thing. I have my complaints (freaking interminable red lights) but so far these are minor. Stay tuned.

San Diego: See above. And I do miss my friends, the view from my old office, and a good, authentic carne asada burrito.

Sports: Right now, I'm all about the Carolina Hurricanes. Two wins and I'll be downtown Raleigh experiencing my first championship parade. Who'd a thunk it? Other than that, I've signed up for Tito's World Cup fantasy league, but I know almost as much about international soccer as I do about NASCAR. I've employed a strategy of the one-name players, but the rules state that you can have only three players from one team and all the one-name players seem to be Brazilian, Portuguese, on Angolan. I've had to branch out to names that made me laugh, but I did actually draft a few players who I've heard of before. Should be fun.

Weather: I love the weather here. Afternoon thunderstorms galore. I haven't signed up to be a weather spotter yet, but I'm thinking about it. There's actually weather to spot in North Carolina, it being one of those places that take a Storm Watch seriously, and that's a good thing.